Left intellectuals and power

Review of “Reasoning about the“ end of the revolution ”” by Boris Kapustin

The Gaidar Institute has published a new book by the Russian philosopher Boris Kapustin. His next work is devoted to the crisis of left -wing ideas and the disappointment of intellectuals in the possibility of a world social revolution. The author is not ready to come to terms with either one or the other. Eduard Lukoyanov - about the main ideas collected and disassembled under the cover of this book.

Boris Kapustin. Reasoning about the "end of the revolution." M.: Publishing house of the Institute of Gaidara, 2019

Boris Guryevich Kapustin is known as a person, frankly, Neskuchny. A philosopher, a researcher of left -handed theory and practice, a professor of Yale University, a bright lecturer - we will not bore you with a listing of all his qualities and achievements.

The new book “Logos magazine” is a 150-page volume, dedicated to what Kapustin calls “Thesis about the end of the revolution”. Or rather, his debunking. The core essay (let us allow ourselves to determine the genre for the author of the text) an analysis of a large myth of the revolution, at some point assigned by left-wing political forces and then almost without a fight given to the enemy from the right camp.

Anyone who more or less monitors the left at different levels, whether it be fake fuss and congresses of toy international or serious mainstream discussions (gender, eco-active etcetera), easily notes a detail that unites such a heterogeneous movement. What can the Portrait of Stalin have in common at a rally of the Communist Party and the inscriptions of “eat the rich” left by a young anarchist on the wall of his native school? Both the face of the leader of the peoples, and the romantic-hooligan inscription on the fence have long lost their ideological filling, becoming at best a marker of declared radicalism or an empty meme. The dream of the world revolution has faded into the background, giving way to the left discourse of the “real” policy (elections at different levels, “work with the population”, often giving the protesting of the protest rally) and lower initiatives (creation of volunteer microorganizations, mutual assistance groups, seminars). From a relatively recent, wide generalizations and utopian plans for the reconstruction of the world are the gun of the right of various stripes: successful populists, desperate fanatics, intellectual charlatans .

“Now the left, if this term still retains some meaning in the present conditions, more radically, philosophically thoroughly and politically uncompromisingly denies the revolution than their right-wing opponents, more precisely than those right theorists who have ceased to be opponents of the left on the revolution,” Boris Kapustin more than rightly notes. And further: “The attitude <...> of the left to the“ end of the revolution ”is deeply schizophrenic. On the one hand, it was they who gave, perhaps, the most vivid examples of a deep analysis of the current neoliberal revolution precisely as a revolution (understanding the radical transformation of key public institutions, dominant ideologies and “values systems”, a change in the elites of the power of power <...>). But, on the other hand, this is so “incorrect” revolution (in the sense of the deprivation of any liberation content that should be “real” revolutions) that it can only serve as an additional evidence of the breakdown of the “political ontology” of the revolution and, therefore, a confirmation of the “thesis about the end of the revolution”.

To analyze the idea of the collapse of the liberation project of the revolution and how the “resistance” replaced the revolution (that is, the “Exodus from power”, and not the struggle for it), the main part of the essay is dedicated. Boris Guryevich identifies six basic arguments, which are most often addressed by those who declare the impossibility of fundamental changes in the capitalist society.

6. Democracy is the “coffin of the revolution”. This thesis is extremely clear and close not only to the supporters of the authoritarian models of the social structure. Kapustin admits:

“Indeed, democracy in tandem with capitalism turned out to be a very effective method of“ pacification ”of social conflicts-she managed to replace (supposedly outdated)“ bilateral class struggle ”“ unilateral ”, which the“ owners of the world ”conducted against the whole society, and so that society practically stopped resisting (not counting all sorts of shows like“ Alive Wall Street ”).

The problem is that by democracy we usually mean the form of government and a catalog of values that the post -war West exported to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and some other regions. This is precisely that the spike of democracy and capitalism, the revolution of which is a conservative, leveling concept of a demos, people as a subject of power. Such a democratic system by its very nature is not identical to social equality. Even the very word “revolutionary” in such a society will rather hear in relation to the new model of a smartphone than to serious political force.

But, the author indicates, democracy is a method that, like any method, in practice can be applied differently. The current democracy, using the levers that proved the effectiveness, can level social contradictions, making concessions to society. But she will never be able to achieve her absolute, completely reducing conflicts to naught and without leaving the gourmet for the revolution.

5. Globalization as an obstacle to the revolution. This argument follows from the general anti -historical system of the capitalist system of the world. If we agree that the revolution is a modernization of society, then under the influence of globalization, even the most backward countries are modernized and approaching the end of history and, accordingly, the end of the revolution.

“The argument about globalization as an obstacle to the revolution is paradoxical <...> in another respect-in that in which he is forced to somehow combine with the argument about the revolution as an aspect-moderation <...>. The last argument allows the revolution on the periphery of the world system, since there are still “modernization processes” leading to the “Plateau of our time”.
Methodologically, the paradox is that one of these two arguments makes it impossible for another: the world or the one that involves the argument of globalization, <...> or the world is a simple unit of countries that are deprived of systemic unity and existing in different historical times - in pre -heating (undergoing modernization) or in modernity (completing modernization). ”

4. The negative impact on the revolution of the changed international factor. It is generally accepted that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the end of the left revolutionary project. The Communist Kremlin ideologically and financially supported Western revolutionaries and national liberation movements in the third world countries, which are now left without a livelihood.

According to Kapustin, such a simplification of revolutionary processes that took place in the second half of the twentieth century is an elementary propaganda trick. In reality, the USSR acted in the international arena by force not just not revolutionary, but counter -revolutionary. To do this, it is enough to recall the experience of the social block, whose members were forcibly turned into satellites without their own political will. And you can pay attention to what the relations of Moscow with states were stretched and even hostile, the revolution in which was not imposed on top, but became the result of the autonomous actions of the masses: Yugoslavia, China, Albania.

“So, in fact, has changed with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the collapse of the USSR? First of all, the fact that the bipolar world was replaced by a single -sex (of course, disputed under the slogan of “multipolarity” by those who remained outside the “club of the elect”). This is a tremendous change. Any single-Polar world, whatever its political and economic color, is, in principle, unfavorable for any protest movements, not to mention radical liberation movements, striving to hit the sick points of the existing status quuo. <...> For a long time all this? "

Obviously, the perturbations of recent years are forced to answer this question rather negatively than positively, and the notorious “end of a unipolar world” is something more than a rhetorical trick.

3. The revolution is caused by socio-political backwardness. Supporters of this argument indicate that the coups were inevitable only in backward societies with “non -modern” political regimes. Of course, the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 will come to our reader first of all as examples are closest and most bloody. However, Kapustin on the move lists other revolutions that did not happen in the royal revolution, but in the advanced industrial societies: the Weimar Republic, the Austrian Revolution of 1918, the French May 68th.

“However, the most entertaining is different: those who are trying to empirically prove that revolutions have never happened in“ industrial societies ”, by silence are by silence and, we add the most fatal of the revolutions that occurred in them - the revolutions that occurred on the right, and not on the left, the Nazi and fascist revolutions in Germany, Italy and other countries. They completely correspond to the additional criteria presented to the “real” revolutions, and the “standard” definition of the revolution. ”

2. Disappointment in the revolution. The masses no longer believe in the possibility of a positive revolution, and without mass support, such global changes are impossible. So at least supporters of this argument. But Kapustin is skeptical of the very formulation of the problem. Firstly, it is self-evident that no one can objectively judge who represents the masses and, moreover, cannot evaluate their degree of charm or disappointment from a non-existent school. Secondly, is the “charm of the revolution” in practice? Here Boris Guryevich makes a well -aimed, although unpleasant for many, a remark:

“Abundant historical evidence shows that the masses, in fact, have never been covered by the desire for a revolution before it has already happened. And this applies, among other things, to the most “exemplary” from the “great revolutions”. ”

But, Kapustin resembles, even representatives of the Frankfurt school recognized the collapse of the revolution, declared themselves defeators, and all subsequent uprisings - the appearance of the revolution. A textbook example of such a position is the words of Jacques Lacan, addressed to demonstrators in May 68: “Being revolutionaries, you want to receive a master. And you will have it. ” For a critical intellectual, a certain invisible and omnipotent gentleman is simply universal in the finally established historical situation. Here, the author switches to an almost angry journalistic pathos that is actually not characteristic of the whole book:

“Isn't it worth answering all allegations about the insecurity of the master of the only true vigorous naivety in this case:“ So what? Why shouldn't we throw out several most notorious villains if we cannot throw them all at once and finally? Why do you call a revolution that achieves such a result, “visibility”? Whether it is “visibility” or not to judge, it is not for you, disappointed intellectuals, but only to us, those who put the soul into the revolution, who practice it, whom she turns into something new and more than we were before, into those who “make history”. ”

1. The imbalance of forces between revolutionaries and loyalists. Any revolution will sooner or later encounter power resistance, whether it is the requirements of freeing conditional space or direct bloodshed. The philistine (in the neutral sense of the word) logic suggests that in such a situation the advantage on the side of those who have real physical strength - the army, the police and the like.

Of course, even armed rebels are unlikely to have chances against a disciplined army, obeying their commanders. The maximum that the radicals squeezed out of a similar situation was the city Gerila, which smoothly turn into a war on wear. But for a successful revolution, according to Kapustin, power is not at all the main thing. And here he turns to observation belonging to Engels:

“No rebellion can win if it unfolds in a purely military manner - as a“ battle between the two armies ”, if the leaders of government troops,“ having discarded all kinds of political considerations, begin to act based on a purely military point of view ... ”, if insurgents cannot“ shake the spirit of troops with a moral impact ”.”

As in the middle of the 19th century, so in our time political will prevails over real force. And the most important task of the participants in the revolution "in preventing its degeneration in a purely military confrontation, that it develops as a moral and political phenomenon."

We think that the reader does not need to go far for examples. The experience of unsuccessful coups, which have passed into the war of all against all, we see since the Arab spring. Successful revolutions, allowed by radical policy of protest,, however, also observed, although we tend to think less about them.

So, as well as our abilities, we retold, albeit very rudely, the main points of the essay of Boris Kapustin, his position and claims to the mainstream left intellectuals. But what is the practical benefit for the reader and to whom can it be addressed at all?

In our opinion, the answer to this question lies in the main drawback of the book, which is simultaneously its main advantage. The book does not have enough appeal to specific examples from the present. It is clear that the author is a philosopher, not a publicist, and it is important for him to look for universal generalizations and not comment on momentary events that the next day seem not what they were yesterday. The Kapustin tools take the appropriate, appealing exclusively to the established authoritative works that make up the gentleman's set of left intellectual: Arendt, Adorno, Zhizhek, Wallerstein, Weber and so on. And this is wonderful. It is wonderful because Kapustin is not shy, having every right to dissect the tired dogmas, which are still being addressed only to turn.

But the most important thing is that the polemic essay turns into a laconic guide on the main names of the left -century leftist thought, analyzing their ideas that arose in crisis moments. For those who are interested in this area of human life, the “reasoning about the“ end of the revolution ”” will become a good textbook that will help to understand the logic of the previous generations of Marxists and critics of Marxism, without falling under the unnecessary charm of their authority. For the reader, the book of Kapustin is already firmly involved in the left discourse will be the reason for revaluation of values. Well, or the opportunity to take away the soul, quarreling with the book and its invisible author.

I would like to complete the story about this essay one of the observations from which it begins.

At the junction of the XIX and XX centuries, the leading intellectuals of their time met a new era full of absolute delight. Inspired by the achievements of science, they declared the twentieth century that milestone when history ends if it has not ended, and humanity will devote itself entirely to the development of previous achievements. The coming century was declared "the era of reason, not passions." And then the First World War happened.

Be vigilant.